The "why" is pretty simple.

The product was originally called FilesX, developed by a different company.
Purchased by IBM, renamed to TSM FastBack.
So it isn't integrated into TSM YET, but that doesn't mean it won't be
eventually.  To what extent remains to be seen.

Originally designed as a disk-to-disk backup product for relatively small
offices.
It has cool techology, as described above, like the ability to "see" the
data you are restoring, before the restore is complete.  Very very good way
to deal with Exchange restores.

Places where it would be appropriate NOW::

-If you have a remote office, it's often cheaper, faster, certainly easier,
and requires less admin skills to implement disk-only backups than to
install tape drives.  You can have the data replicated via IP up to your
big-iron TSM server for DR purposes.

-In an Enterprise environment, people who have to deal with Exchange every
day could benefit from implementing Fastback, because of its ability to
quickly restore ANY object, down to the message level, task entries, you
name it.  You could still run TDP for Exchange to get your full dumps onto
tapes for vaulting for compliance reasons - best of both worlds.  etc.  etc.

As far as the integration, I think you'll find that's coming soon, at least
that's being planned.
(I don't work for IBM, this is not an official announcment of anything, just
my opinion.)

Now is just really early in the product lifecycle.

W





On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:06 AM, Martin Panggabean <
martin.panggabean AT niagaprima DOT com> wrote:

> I agree with you Stef. I don't understand why this said product as part of
> TSM but they don't really integrate with the current TSM we use. Anyone can
> answer this? Hopefully for future development IBM can make this much
> better.
>
> BR,
>
> Martin Panggabean
>
> On Thu, 9 Oct 2008 08:41:44 +0200, Stef Coene <stef.coene AT DOCUM DOT ORG>
> wrote:
> > On Wednesday 08 October 2008, Elana Samuels wrote:
> >> I was recently told by IBM that their new product TSM Fastback will be
> >> eventually replacing the TDP's.  Unfortunately it doesn't currently work
> >> directly with TSM's database.  It allows you to replicate the data and
> > then
> >> you can backup the copy.  That includes Exchange and Databases such as
> > SQL.
> >> We are waiting for a evaluation copy to actually try it out.  I've seen
> >> others in this mailing list mention they too are looking at this
> > product.
> >> If anyone has actually had a chance to play and use it... please share
> > what
> >> you've learned.
> > We tried TSM FastBack.  And we are not going to implement it in it's
> > current
> > form.
> >
> > - The name is wrong.  "TSM Fastback" means that it belongs to the TSM
> > software
> > portfolio but it is a total standanlone product.  If you really really
> > really
> > want, you can backup the backup (so a copy of the backuped data) to a TSM
> > server.  They should have called it Tivoli Fastback.
> >
> > - There are some nice features like the snapshot idea:  When restoring a
> > whole
> > drive, the table of contents is restored and users can access all the
> > data.
> > In the background, Fastback is restoring the data.  If a user clicks a
> > file,
> > the data is restored immediatly so he can access his file.  IBM proved it
> > buy
> > playing a movie that was restoring in the background.  Even a fast
> forward
> > to
> > the end of the file worked perfectly.  So a multi million file drive is
> > restored in a few minutes and the users can access all the data.  Cool.
> >
> > - You can restore a single file, a single drive (snapshot, so instant
> > access
> > to the data) or a whole server.  The last option is a bare metal restore
> > on
> > different hardware without doing any special during the backup.
> >
> > - Exchange backup: you can restore individual mails / attachments/
> > contacts / ...  I think they use the same snapshot idea as in my second
> > point
> > by restoring the drive with the exchange store and then you restore the
> > single items without restoring the whole drive.  There is a nice frontend
> > for
> > this where you can drage the items you need from the backup to the
> primary
> > exchange server.
> >
> > - continuous data production:  all changed blocks are recorded and
> > bacuped.
> > So the backup windows is very minimal.
> >
> > - Only backup to disk.  You need something like TSM to backup the data to
> > a
> > tape library.
> >
> > - Only windows supported.  Linux support is under way.
> >
> > So, unless IBM is going to incorporated the technology in TSM, we are not
> > going to implement TSM Fastback.
> >
> >
> > Stef
>